Transporting Karachi

The need for a mass transit system in Karachi has been evident for at least a quarter of a century. There were high hopes that the Japanese would breathe life into the moribund Circular Railway project but they lost interest. Today, the buzz is all about buses and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on February 26 laid the foundation of the Green Line Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) at Annu Bhai Park, Nazimabad. This is the third bus-based mass-transit infrastructure system to be commissioned or come on stream in the life of the current government. The Lahore and Rawalpindi-Islamabad projects are now well established and the Green Line BRT is scheduled to be completed in the remarkably short space of 14 months. Difficulties around the proposed ‘Blue Line’ mean that the Green Line has been extended to 22km and has 22 stops on average 800m apart. This does not come cheap and is going to cost at least Rs23 billion in the revised and extended format, costs unlikely to be recouped in less than 20 years.

In broad terms, we can but welcome this development, but note that as recently as 2014 there were six corridors for the BRT but only the Green appears to be going ahead. We also note that the projected cost has doubled in less than two years. Then there is the heritage factor. There is something of a brouhaha in Lahore at the damage to heritage sites being caused by the construction of the Orange line railway. The route of the Green Line BRT is going to inevitably impinge upon similar sites in Karachi, particularly along MA Jinnah Road. In Rawalpindi, many businesses have been badly affected by a loss of custom caused by being overshadowed by elevated sections of the Islamabad Metrobus. Likewise Karachi. Have the links to urban planning been adequately made or planned for and are feeder links planned and who will build them and pay for their development? We have no wish to pour cold water for no good reason, but Karachi is a graveyard of mass-transit projects. We hope the Green Line does not go the way of so many others.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2016.

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